50 Books: Outlander
Title/Author: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Page Count/Book Type: 627
Genre: Historical Fiction/Time Travel/Romance
Back of the Book: The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon -- when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach -- an "outlander" -- in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in the year of Our Lord. . .1943.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life . . .and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn by fidelity and desire. . .between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Page One:
Part One: Invernes, 1945
A New Beginning
It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird's was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.
I met Mrs. Baird in the front hall on my way out. She stopped me with a pudgy hand on my arm and patted my hair.
"Dear me, Mrs. Randall, ye canna go out like that! Here, just let me tuck that bit in for ye. There! That's better. Ye know, my cousin was tellin' me about a new perm she tried, comes out beautiful and holds likea drea; perhaps ye should try that kind next time."
I hadn't the heart to tell her that the waywardness of my light brown curls was strictly the fault of nature, and not due to any dereliction on the part of the permanent-wave manufacturers. Her own tightly marceled waves suffered from no such perversity.
"Yes, I'll do that, Mrs. Baird," I lied. "I'm just going down to the village to meet Frank. We'll be back for tea." I ducked out the door and down the path before she could detect any further defects in my undisciplined appearance. After four years as a Royal Army nurse, I was enjoying the escape from uniforms and rationing by indulging in brightly colored light cotton dresses, totally unsuited for rough walking through the heather.
Not that I had originally planned to do a lot of that; my thoughts ran more on the lines of sleeping late in the mornings, and long, lazy afternoons in bed with Frank, not sleeping. However, it was difficult to maintain the proper moon of languorous romance with Mrs. Baird industriously Hoovering away outside the door.
"That must be the dirtiest bit of carpet in the entire Scottish Highlands," Frank had observed that morning as we lay in bed listening to the ferocious road of the vacuum in the hallway.
"Nearly as dirty as our landlady's mind," I agreed. "Perhaps we should have gone to Brighton after all." We had chosen the Highlands as a place to holiday before Frank took up his appointment as a history professor at Oxford, on the ground that Scotland had been somewhat less touched by the physical horrors of the war that the rest of Britain, and was less susceptible to the frenetic postwar gaiety that infection more popular vacation spots.
I picked up this series on a whim because I can't resist a historical fiction, time traveling, romance novel and, not going to lie, the books covers were kind of attractive. I probably wouldn't call this the best book I've ever read and there are some parts that annoy me, but I keep hanging on every page. There are plenty of twists and the author has a clever way of writing some parts, and while I don't think it's a page turner in the same way, say Harry Potter or Twilight was, I kept going at it in all my free time.
The only things that bugged me a bit was that the main character is supposed to be age twenty-seven in 1945, but her characterization and way of thinking is a little bit too modern, I feel, for the time. She acts more like a woman out of 2010, with a "no man is going to hold me back" kind of attitude that I don't think women really had back then? I get where she's coming from as a combat nurse and I'm sure that's an experience in of itself but I don't know. I love all the side characters (which is how I felt about Harry Potter and Twilight) and Claire herself isn't badly written (in fact I can kind of relate to her?) but her relationship with Jamie is kind of realistic and kind of frustrating.
She's a pretty sexual character, and that's fine, I can understand that, but there are certain parts where I was thinking: "If that was me and if I left my husband, would I really be that ready to sleep with this new guy?" 'Cause there are a few spots where even I was like, "gurl, you in danger."
I liked this book and I picked up the second in the series, Dragonfly in Amber, but I don't think I'll have a definitive answer on whether I love it or hate it until I'm further in. What the author does do really well is describing Scotland and all the little details of the castle and the Highlands. I had to resist the urge to go out and buy Braveheart, hah. I'd recommend it for an entertaining read. It's like a step below The Time Traveler's Wife and Harry Potter, but a few notches above Twilight for me.